


The Weirdest Way to Get to First Base

by QueenofStarlight



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 17:29:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14266068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenofStarlight/pseuds/QueenofStarlight
Summary: i.e. hownotto get a date, unless you're Lance McClain and Keith Kogane, because they're idiots.T for Strong Language





	The Weirdest Way to Get to First Base

**Author's Note:**

  * For [all_ivvant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_ivvant/gifts).



> happy birthday alex! here's the thieving cat fic i promised owo

“Where the Hell did they go this time?!” Lance practically yells through his apartment, officially perplexed as how his underwear managed to disappear again. 

In the two months since he moved into this apartment, Lance has had clothing go missing. More specifically, he’s had his  _ underwear _ go missing. At first, he’d chalked it up to him just misplacing things. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d permanently lost things by putting them somewhere and then immediately forgetting where. But after the seventh pair gone missing, he could swear it wasn’t just him forgetting. They were  _ disappearing _ . 

Today, when he’d gone to shower, he’d very carefully folded his clothes after undressing and set them on the bathroom counter. The rest of the stack still sits there, seemingly untouched. Except his boxers are now gone, and Lance is concerned he’s got a panty thief targeting him.

So, instead of being smart and locking up his home or calling the cops, he decides to set a trap.

The next day, he goes about his routine as normal: wake up, open the window in the foyer (when he later recognizes it leads onto the fire escape and he’d been leaving it open all day every day since he moved in, he feels like an absolute idiot) and gathering the clothes he wants to wear. It takes about ten minutes before he’s finally ready to shower. 

He carefully folds his clothing, underwear on top, and places the pile on the bathroom counter. It can’t be more inviting to whatever gross creep is constantly stealing his things. 

He gets in the shower, and waits. He whistles quietly, listening for any sounds of movement in his apartment. And then a crash echoes throughout the room. Lance throws the shower curtain aside and point accusingly at the culprit, who has barely made it to the counter, apparently having knocked his brush to the tiled floor.

It’s a cat.

Lance pauses, back scrubber in one hand and raised as a weapon, and the cat stares back at him with its intense yellow eyes. It’s a Maine Coon, with thick fur that’s almost red. It’s cute.

It’s also holding a pair of his boxers in its mouth - not the pair that he’d set out as a trap, and Lance barely has a second to be annoyed - and that simple fact denotes the cat’s cuteness by a great deal. Lance lowers the back scrubber and grabs a towel from the rack, wrapping it around his middle in slow, careful motions. The cat watches him intently, poised to run. 

“C’mere, cutie, sweet sweet kitty cat-” 

Lance’s cooing is cut off as his foot catches on the wall of the tub, and he trips out of the shower with a crash. The cat bolts. 

“Oh goddamnit!” 

Lance takes off after the cat, skidding on the polished wood floors with his wet feet. He catches sight of it leaping off the back of his couch and follows it, clambering out his window with a curse as his feet burn from the metal of the fire escape. Arizona sun doesn’t offer much shade, that’s for sure. The cat’s on the platform below him and Lance shouts, climbing hastily down after it.

It disappears into a window below and without thinking, Lance follows, practically falling into the apartment that sits right below his own. When he looks up, the cat is sitting in the middle of the room, appearing quite elegant with its tail curled around it, Lance’s underwear still in its mouth.

There’s also a man standing there above the cat, eyes wide at the scene before him, a melted, half-eaten popsicle in one hand. Lance doesn’t have the chance to admit the guy’s attractive with his hair pulled up into a ponytail and a bright red crop top showing off his abs, because then he’s suddenly faced with an incredibly angry-looking man waving a baseball bat at his head.

Lance yelps and ducks the first swing, scrambling away from the crazy man with the bat, and offhandedly realizes just how terrible this must look, him climbing in some stranger’s window in nothing but a towel. Of course, the stranger gives him no time to explain the matter.

“Get out of my apartment! Fucking pervert!” The man shouts, swinging the bat again and just barely missing Lance’s chin. “I’m gonna call the goddamn police!”

Lance slips and falls to the wood floor, the metal bat falling right next to him and denting the spot by his elbow. He mumbles incoherent apologies and races for the front door, throwing it open and stumbling out into the hall, panting and more than mildly terrified. The door is slammed shut behind him.

Lance’s towel is gone, because this is his luck today, apparently, so he crouches in a ball outside the Thieving Cat Man’s door and tries to cover himself. A door opens down the hall. A young woman with messy brown-blonde hair and glasses steps out, looks him dead in the eyes, and says: “I’m going to walk back into my apartment now, and the next next time we speak, we’re going to pretend this never happened.” Then she does exactly that, shutting the door behind her.  


“Hey, um, sir?” Lance says cautiously, rapping his knuckles against Cat Man’s door.

There’s the sound of buttons being pushed, and a ringer going, and Lance panics, realizing the guy really wasn’t kidding when he said he was going to call to police.

“Wait wait wait! Please, don’t call 911, I promise I’m not a pervert! Please man, believe me!”

The sounds stop. “Why should I believe some creep who breaks into my apartment naked?!” Cat Man yells, still sounding verypissed off. 

“Hey, I wasn’t  _ naked _ , I had a towel. Which is on your floor right now, by the way! And your cat stole my underwear! I’ve had eight pairs of boxers go missing in two months, nine if you count the ones your cat literally just took from my house five minutes ago. I caught it in the act when I was in the shower and followed it so I could get them back. I didn’t mean to freak you out or anything I swear, I just want my boxers back.” Lance explains, curling up tighter around himself.

For a moment, there’s silence, and Lance wonders if perhaps Cat Man just went into another room and really is calling the police, but then the door opens and Lance topples backward into the apartment, hurrying to cover himself while Cat Man looks politely in a different direction. 

Lance grabs his towel from where it’s sitting in a heap on the floor, and Cat Man coaxes his Thief cat to hand over Lance’s boxers. He takes them gratefully and there’s a long moment where the two of them just kind of stand there, not knowing what to say or do. 

“Um, sorry about my cat. I knew she went outside all the time, but I didn’t know she was stealing from people when she did.” Cat Man says, standing uncomfortably straight.

“You didn’t wonder where all the random boxers were coming from?” Lance asks incredulously.

Cat Man shrugs. “My brother buys me clothes sometimes because I don’t really like shopping, so I always just kind of assumed they were from him?”

“...wouldn’t they be packaged if they were?” Cat Man shrugs again, red in the face. Lance sighs. “Well, would you mind giving me back the rest of the ones your cat stole? I’d rather not have to go buy more, if that makes sense.”

“Oh, yeah, of course!” Cat Man snaps out of his awkward posture and turns bright red. “Just, uh, gimme a minute. I have to go...change…”

Lance watches Cat Man scurry into his bedroom, and he can feel his own face heating up because an attractive stranger is wearing his underwear, and while it really should be creepy and concerning, Lance just thanks the Gods for the image that’s been planted in his head of his cute neighbor wearing his favorite pair of boxers. There’s nothing wrong with wishful thinking, right?

Lance listens to the sound of drawers opening and closing and hurried footsteps, and the Thief cat never takes her eyes off him, still sitting elegantly in the center of the room, where the sun makes a window-shaped square on the floorboards. She looks soft, and really adorable, and it almost negates the fact she’s been stealing Lance’s underwear for two months straight.

He doesn’t try to pet her, just stays put in his part of the room by the door and waits for Cat Man

When Cat Man finally emerges, he’s no longer wearing that bright red crop top Lance admits to liking, instead wearing a black hoodie with a  faded MCR logo. He hands Lance a hastily folded stack of boxers (the pair on top are warm, and he must have shown it on his face because Cat Man very obviously avoids his gaze when Lance looks at him again) and shoves his hands deep in his pockets. They fall silent again, avoiding eye contact. The cat meows loudly.

“Okay, well, thanks? For my underwear.” Lance says, taking a step back toward the door. “It was nice to meet you, despite the circumstances, uh…”

“Keith,” Cat Man interjects as Lance falls short. “My name’s Keith.”

Lance smiles. “I’m Lance. And your cat?”

“Oh, that’s Red. Sorry, again, about the...stealing. I really didn’t know that’s what was happening.” 

“It’s no big deal, really. Sorry for climbing in your window and freaking you out.

“No problem.”

Silence.

“Well, I’m gonna go. Wouldn’t wanna overstay my welcome and all that.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. Have a good day.”

“Thanks.”

Lance steps out of Keith’s door, and Keith waves awkwardly, Red curling around his legs. Lance smiles slightly back and heads off down the hall toward the stairs before anyone sees him.

  
  
  
  


Two days later, when Lance comes home from work, there’s a bright blue gift bag sitting in front of his door with a package of white socks that are miraculously his size and a note from Keith in bright red ink, apologizing for having almost pummeled Lance with a baseball bat. Lance smiles.

  
  
  
  


Lance doesn’t see Keith, ever, for a good three weeks after the Thieving Cat Chase Incident. 

He does see Red, though, because leaving his window open is a habit and she’s actually rather nice company so long as Lance is careful about putting his clothes straight into the lid-topped hamper and closing the bathroom door when he showers. She comes to visit nearly every day, and one day Lance buys treats and a way-too-realistic mouse toy for her. She eats the treats out of his hand with a delicate purr, rubbing against Lance’s fingers with her so-soft face. The mouse toy is gone when Red is, and Lance sighs. So much for her playing with it in  _ his _ apartment.

He doesn’t hear from Keith again until the fifth week after the Incident, wherein Red shows up one day with a half-crumpled note tucked into her collar. 

_ ‘if you’ve been giving red treats, please stop. the vet said she’s overweight so i’m putting her on a diet for now. thanks. _

_ \- keith’ _

“No more treats, huh?” Lance says, mostly to himself. Red, however, whirls toward him at the mention of treats, and Lance feels bad for getting her hopes up. “Sorry, daddy said no treats.”

He immediately regrets referring to Keith as “daddy” because now there are lewd images in his head, and he really didn’t need any of that today.

“Well, guess I’m gonna have to take these back then. Wouldn’t want you ripping into them when I’m not looking, ‘cause I know you will, you little thief.” Lance grabs out the bag of salmon-flavored cat treats he’d just bought the day before and prays he still has the receipt. He finds it in the very bottom of his laundry basket and tucks it into his pocket, heading for the door. Red meows at him when he goes to leave and he leans down to rub her under the chin before stepping out.

It’s cloudy for Phoenix, though still hot, and Lance sighs when he steps out of the heat and into a wonderfully air-conditioned Walmart. The return takes only a couple minutes and he gets his full refund, but as he goes to leave, a shirt in the clearance section catches his eye.

It’s a black crop top with a cat face on the front in rainbow colors, and for some reason, Keith is the first thing that comes to mind. Probably because Lance really, really,  _ really  _ thought Keith was hot in that red crop top, even if he’s literally only met the guy once and it was through very weird circumstances. What’s wrong with appreciating a stranger’s beauty? Nothing, Lance thinks.

After a good long moment of consideration - i.e. the two seconds it takes to check the price and decide it’s reasonable - Lance buys the shirt, and when he gets home, he tapes a note to the front of it that reads:  _ ‘are we past first base? cause i’ll take you on a home run.’ _

Then he drops the shirt in the middle of his living room floor and goes to make lunch.

The shirt is still there when he comes back out.

Lance frowns, knowing Red’s been in. Maybe she just hasn’t left yet, he thinks. But then he sees her hop in the window, sniff the shirt, and then leave it with a quiet huff and head for his bedroom. 

Five minutes later, Lance hears a crash in his room and goes to find Red having knocked over his hamper to get the lid off, and he just barely gets the door closed to trap her in with the stolen goods. 

“Why is it always my underwear? Why can’t you steal the thing I actually want you to steal?” He asks, not expecting an answer.

Red drops the pair of boxers on the floor and curls up around them, rubbing her cheeks on them.

_ Oh God. _

“Okay, well, I’ve officially decided you’re nasty. And Keith called  _ me _ a pervert!” 

Lance tries not to think about what that means in terms of how to get Red to steal the shirt for Keith, because he refuses to even  _ consider _ rubbing his junk on anything that’s supposed to be a gift. The image of it flashes in his mind and he cringes, thanking the Gods for the fact Keith isn’t in the general vicinity because seeing him while having these thoughts would really make everything so much worse. 

Lance rights his hamper and puts the lid back on, taking his pair of dirty boxers from Red before scooping her up into his arms - he’s grateful she’s not aggressive, she doesn’t fight it at all- and carries her from the room, making sure the door and window are both closed. 

It’s when he’s back in his kitchen to finish his lunch that he remembers the can of catnip spray he’d bought when he babysat Hunk’s cat Muffin ages ago and hidden in one of his cupboards. He finds the can with relative ease and sprays some on a sock Red apparently found under the couch - what the fuck, past Lance? - and left on the floor by the coffee table once she discovered it didn’t smell like Lance’s groin. (Again, ew.)

Red comes over immediately as he sprays the sock, curious. He lets her sniff it a few times, and then she grabs it from his hand and starts off toward the window, Lance hurrying after her to take the sock back before she can actually leave. 

He sprays the shirt he wants to give to Keith and makes sure the note is still taped securely to the front, and puts it back on the floor where Red definitely saw it earlier.

She walks over to it, sniffs it, and takes off with it out the window.

_ Success. _

  
  
  
  


Over the next two weeks, Lance finds six more t-shirts that remind him of Keith, all of them with cat themes, and he sends them all to Keith with silly little baseball puns through Red, who is all but eager to steal them once he’s sprayed them with liquid catnip. He kind of wonders if the spray is actually liquidized catnip or if it’s scented or something, but after about a minute he decides that once he actually does know, he’ll probably wish he hadn’t. So he doesn’t look it up.

Red spends a good amount of time in his apartment, and he gets used to having her around. It’s like she’s become a part of his household, even though she doesn’t really live with him. He still buys her toys (despite the fact she takes each and every one of them back to Keith’s apartment) and catnip (because her reaction to the spray had intrigued him, and the real catnip had made her act so fucking  _ high _ he’d ended up laughing his ass off on his kitchen floor) so how different is it to having a cat himself?

Lance has just gotten home from the library, having stopped by after work to get a book on cat care - because he doesn’t really know how often you can give a cat catnip, spray or not, without it being harmful, and that’s a pretty important thing to know with his current gift delivery system - when he finds a plastic grocery bag hung over his doorknob, a note taped above it.

Inside the bag is all seven of the shirts he’d bought for Keith, and his heart sinks. Then he reads the note.

_ ‘they’re the wrong size.’ _

Is all it says, and Lance offhandedly wonders if maybe Keith didn’t react all too well to his flirting. After all, they did meet only once, and, as Lance is reminded pretty much every time he thinks of Keith, it wasn’t under the best of circumstances. 

Then he flips the note over and finds Keith’s  _ actual _ size written on the back, along with  _ ‘i loved them, by the way’ _ in crooked letters. 

Well then.

Lance can’t help but smile, because Keith  _ liked _ his gifts. And he must have actually tried them on which means he isn’t rejecting them, which means he doesn’t hate Lance, which means Lance might -  _ might _ \- actually have a chance. Which is more than a little bit inflating to Lance’s ego, but he pretends not to notice and goes straight into hatching a plan. A plan to woo Keith.

Technically, he’s already part of the way there, so the first thing Lance does is head back to the store so he can swap the shirts he bought Keith for the right size. Luckily, all of the shirts are still in stock, and the size he needs is available in all of them.

_ Small victories _ , Lance thinks.

Then he goes off in search for another gift, half-panicking because he’s still only spoken to Keith in person once, and he knows literally nothing about the guy except that he lives below Lance, has a cat, and must have played baseball at some point because what else would he have a bat for? (Lance pointedly doesn’t consider that Keith might have a bat specifically to protect himself in situations where someone is intruding on his home, the way Lance did, totally on accident.) He settles on a $7 box of assorted chocolates, because who  _ doesn’t _ like chocolate?

He also ends up buying yet another shirt - a black hoodie with cat ears that actually stand up on their own - along with a ridiculously sparkly greeting card with a fuzzy photo of Keyboard Cat on the front. Lance kind of thinks a customer might have snuck it onto the rack, because it isn’t at all as high quality as the rest of the cards on display, but the cashier doesn’t question it, so he decides to follow her lead.

Not wanting to risk damaging the card and not knowing how the hell Red would carry a box of chocolates to Keith’s apartment anyway, Lance settles for stacking the shirt, chocolates, and card neatly outside Keith’s front door. And then he leaves a catnip-sprayed sock on the floor with a note taped to it telling Keith to check his stoop. 

And then he waits.

  
  
  
  


_ ‘We may have only just met, but I really think we HIT it off, so I’m inviting you to join me tonight on a date. Doesn’t matter where, I’ll let you choose. If you’ll have me. _

_ Sincerely,  _

_ Lance McClain _

_ AKA Underwear Man’ _

  
  
  
  


Red comes in, meows a quiet hello, and barely stops to let Lance scratch her chin before she beeline for the sock and disappears out the window with it.

Lance continues to wait. 

Red doesn’t return, but just as Lance is despairing over the twenty-one minutes that have gone by since left and has started wondering if maybe Keith  _ isn’t _ interested and now he’s made the guy uncomfortable and he’ll never let Red come to his apartment again, there are footsteps outside his door and three knocks echo throughout the room. It takes Lance a second to fully process what’s happening and then he’s scrambling up from his seat and racing to the door, running fast enough he almost slides into it with his socked feet on the wood floors.

He opens the door, and Keith is standing in the hall outside, cheeks and ears tinted pink, his eyes on his feet that are shifting nervously, as if he can’t decide if he’s comfortable standing there or not. Keith glances up at Lance when the door opens, and neither of them speaks for a moment, until Red literally shoves through between Lance’s legs and meows obnoxiously loud at the two of them, as if annoyed that they’re both so fucking awkward.

“So,” Lance all but whispers. “you’re here.”

Keith nods slowly, still meeting Lance’s gaze. “Yeah. I’m here.”

Then Keith holds up the card Lance had sent him, and Lance realizes that Keith is wearing the cat hoodie. It looks like it fits perfectly. Lance is totally  _ not _ overwhelmed by the desire to see how Keith looks with the hood pulled up and the cat ears in full view.

He’s also holding the box of chocolates, and he holds it out to Lance with a lopsided smile. 

“I appreciate the gift, but I can’t eat these. I’m lactose intolerant.” Keith explains.

Of course, of course Keith is that one person who  _ doesn’t _ like chocolate.

For now, though, Lance really couldn’t care less that Keith doesn’t want the $9 box of fancy assorted chocolates, because Keith is  _ smiling _ , and it’s fucking  _ adorable _ . Lance would sell his soul if it meant he’d get to see a smile like that every single day of his life. That smile in particular, actually. Lance is very much into Keith and he really really hopes Keith is into him too. 

“So,” Keith starts, as Lance takes the box of chocolates and tucks it under his arm. “You said we would go anywhere I want?”   


Lance blanks. “What.”

Keith chuckles, and Lance’s heart skips a fucking beat. “For our date.” 

“Our date.”

“Yes, the date you asked me to go on. Tonight.”

“You’re accepting my date invitation.”

Lance is disbelieving as fuck, he admits, but Keith is right here in front of him and he’s smiling and pushing his hair behind one ear like a shy anime love interest and nodding in agreement. 

“Yes, I’m accepting your date invitation, Lance McClain.” He says. 

Lance grins from ear to ear, is pretty sure he’s blushing bright red, but so is Keith, so what does it matter? He sets the box of chocolates onto the table just inside his door and pulls on a pair of shoes, locking his door behind him and holding an arm out for Keith to take. 

“Alright, Keith. Where to?” He says, because he’ll go anywhere Keith wants to go.

Keith takes his arm and smiles.

“The aquarium? I heard they have a whale shark.” 

Lance nods, takes a step forward. “To the aquarium, then.”

**Author's Note:**

> i don't actually know how the "bases" thing works bc i never had those kinds of friends in high school, so please just ignore that.
> 
> also "stoop" is referring to keith's front door. i realized indoor apartments don't actually have stoops but was too lazy to change it so. yeah.


End file.
